The Beast Tide and the Dao Protection Office

"......" Seeing that Daoist Hengshui had finally relaxed, Lin Yi didn't say much more to explain his relationship with Jiang Yu. Instead, he took it upon himself to steer the topic back to the matter of the demon beast attacks. "Fellow Daoist Hengshui, by your account, the demon beasts that attacked the sects have all been between second and third rank?" "Mm. At least, so far." Though he was a little disappointed not to get his teeth into any gossip about Lin Yi and Jiang Yu, Daoist Hengshui adjusted his mindset quickly enough. "As far as I know, the strongest demon beast to appear during this period was a late-third-rank Jiangshan Sparrow, slain by two Grand Elders of the Changyang Sect fighting side by side." "Other than that one, none of the rest exceeded mid third rank." "I see..." Lin Yi sighed at the words, then said with feigned regret, "And here I thought there might be a fourth-rank beast out there. I'd have liked to see what a demon core actually looks like." "A demon core?" Daoist Hengshui started, not expecting such a term to pop out of Lin Yi's mouth, then laughed despite himself. "Fellow Daoist Lin, that's a rare treasure only born in mid-fourth-rank demon beasts—who could lay eyes on one so easily? To tell you the truth, if a beast of that level really had appeared, the mood in Jiuwu City wouldn't be what it is now..." Lin Yi watched the old man talk on so freely, studying him from the corner of his eye for a moment. The fellow's expression stayed relaxed as he spoke—not the slightest hint of strain or pretense. In other words, this man was most likely telling the truth? Which was strange... Because a demon core had been found inside the bodies of the two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts that attacked the Guihua Sect. Lin Yi had assumed the other sects were running into the same thing. That was the whole point of the regretful act—he had hoped it would shake some intelligence loose... Granted, if there had been only a handful of attacks, it wouldn't be hard for the parties involved to quietly pocket a demon core and pretend nothing had happened. But over a hundred demon beast attacks had struck regions far and wide, without so much as a whisper of one. That clearly didn't add up. Could it be... That the two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts that attacked the Guihua Sect were something more unusual—that they hadn't come from the same source as the demon beasts attacking the other sects? At the thought, Lin Yi sat up a little straighter. "Fellow Daoist Hengshui, where did these demon beasts come from? Is there any word on that yet?" "Wouldn't that be nice? It would put a stop to all these rumors flying around." Daoist Hengshui seemed to remember the matter of being made to lose face by that Senior Wen. Gloomily, he raised his teacup for a sip, somehow giving the drinking of tea the swagger of tossing back liquor. "You may not know this, Fellow Daoist, but demon beasts are mostly fierce-tempered—still, few are savage enough to attack a sect of their own initiative." "What's more, they come in all manner of kinds, yet every last one of them made the same move..." "So among the common folk there's talk that the appearance of these demon beasts is an omen—a harbinger of a beast tide." A beast tide? Lin Yi went still at the words, fingertips twitching as he swiftly took the measure of the spiritual energy around him. "Surely not. Demon beasts attacking sects is odd enough, but the spiritual energy hasn't changed, has it?" Beast tides were a peculiar phenomenon unique to the Tianling Realm. Put simply, once every vast cycle, huge numbers of demon beasts would breed and break through to higher realms at an accelerated pace, driven by some unknown force. During such periods, their craving for the blood essence of cultivators ran extremely high, so once their numbers passed a certain threshold, they would mass into enormous beast tides and hurl themselves at the great cities. A lesser tide might touch only a few percent—or at most a few tenths—of an ordinary province, while a grave one could overturn an entire immortal dynasty. Legend held that near the end of the ancient era, there had even been a beast tide that swept across a whole great domain! To this day, the Tianling Realm still had no settled answer for what caused beast tides. The relatively mainstream view—or rather, explanation—was that a surge in spiritual energy density drove demon beasts to break their limits at extreme speed, because during every beast tide, the quality of the spiritual energy in the affected region did indeed change. The scale of a tide likewise tended to rise and fall with the reach of that increase: the higher it climbed, the larger the tide. It was precisely to withstand a beast tide's assault on the city that Jiuwu City had poured a mountain of resources into its hundred-meter-tall walls. For all that they sounded terrifying, beast tides generally came only once in a very long while. Never mind Jiuwu City—the last beast tide anywhere in Qingzhou had been more than fourteen hundred years ago, back when the Great Sage of the home world had only just finished serving out his sentence. Besides, Qingzhou's spiritual energy hadn't stirred at all of late; by any reading, this was no herald of a beast tide. "I don't think it comes to that either." Daoist Hengshui seemed to share Lin Yi's view; there was hardly any tension on his face, and he was treating the beast tide talk as pure gossip. "But rumors don't care about any of that. The more sensational the tale, the more easily it spreads. And with the Dao Protection Office people already here, today's spectacle is bound to cook up plenty of fresh mischief.... Heh heh heh......" As he spoke, the old man couldn't help snickering a couple of times—sleazy enough that, placed in the Soul Palace, he could have rated an elder's seat at the very least. That was only natural, though. The surrounding sects spent their days orbiting the three great families of Jiuwu City, and now that a powerful outsider had come to knock the Fang family down a peg, more than a few of them were in the mood to watch the fun. Add to that the face Daoist Hengshui had just lost to Senior Wen—his temper still smoldering, it was naturally venting itself on the Fang family. At the words "Dao Protection Office," Lin Yi's gaze shifted slightly. In the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty, the Immortal Alliance formed by the six great sects presided over all the provinces of the realm, yet within each province the local powers were still granted a high degree of autonomy. Jiuwu City was a typical example. It fell under Qingzhou's jurisdiction, but actual control of the city's governance rested with three families: the Fang, the Shen, and the Nie. The Alliance did not leave such powers entirely to their own devices, however. On one hand, the six great sects backed their own favored forces into positions of power within each province; on the other, they subdivided and kept watch over each province's internal structure. Depending on its size, for instance, each province was partitioned into a varying number of "circuits"—a small province like Qingzhou had only four, and Jiuwu City belonged to its Huailing Circuit. Then, on the foundation of those circuits, the Alliance established two institutions: the Dao Inspection Office, which handled routine patrols, and the Dao Protection Office—an out-and-out instrument of force. As far as Lin Yi knew, the Dao Protection Office was itself divided into several halls, but anything more detailed than that, he had no idea about. Over the past few decades, Lin Yi had caught sight of Dao Inspection Office members many times, had even dealt with them face to face, but he had never once laid eyes on anyone from the Dao Protection Office. That the office had now come to Jiuwu City in person showed that the provincial authorities did take this round of anomalies somewhat seriously. ......... After that, Lin Yi asked Daoist Hengshui a few more questions, then settled the remaining payment without the least haggling. And there the two parted ways. Daoist Hengshui walked off with the Five-Colored Luan-Plume Umbrella he had set his heart on, while Lin Yi came away with intelligence vital to both the Guihua Sect and China. A win-win in the truest sense. Once the old Daoist had gone, Lin Yi completed the handover of medicinal pills and spirit stones with the young attendant, then spent a little more time buying varying quantities of Primordial Origin Pills from several other trading houses, large and small. And when all his supplies had been bought, he quietly brought this trip to Jiuwu City to an end.